Bjorn

We totally need a cat thread. It's always time for cat talk. Edited to add: Done. Edited link to correct thread.

Oh yeah, I knew about the Kasavin story (Steve's talked about it before), but I had completely forgotten that it was part of a zine.

Oh my god, please, please, please let this be an article she writes. I wonder if Steve made punk rock 'zines when he was a teen. I'll bet he did.

I've seen it twice now (the lady adores it), and I continue to be really conflicted about it. I wrote quite a bit that was spoilered in the feminism thread months ago, but I'm too lazy to find it on my phone. I think its absolutely shocking that Disney made it given some of the themes going on (rape, forced motherhood, romantic apathy and the demonization of almost all men), but maintaining certain structural elements of the original contribute to its overall messiness. I would argue that it is far from shallow though.Edited to add: I really want to see white god, but I take it that stunning trailer doesn't deliver fully?

Seems obvious, but have you talked with your vet about food options? There also may be a hydration issue, weirdly enough. Cats naturally don't drink a lot of water, they evolved to get much of their water from the flesh of their prey. A decreased appetite can also lead to decreased drinking, which can exacerbate any digestive issues. Canned food is good in this case as it has a lot more water in it. But even simple changes can encourage them to drink more. Our oldest is 15, and as he's gotten older he's much pickier about what he drinks water out of. A couple of years ago, he quit drinking from the communal water bowl, and we'd constantly catch him drink to drink from our water glasses. So now he gets a fresh glass of water in a clean cup twice a day that's separate from the bowl the other cats drink from, and he drinks a ton more water. He's in great health for 15, and still a spry dude. But he's losing weight, dropped about 3 pounds in the last year and a half. It's worrisome, but natural at that age to start losing weight. We intentionally keep three cats though, with several years spaced in between each. It's crushing when a kitty goes, but it helps a lot still having a couple of the furry psychopaths around to keep you company.

The hardest thing would probably not having it cleaned up, but another critter coming by and treating it as a free snacky treat. Dogs and rats love cat shit. And actually, I kind of like the turd in a glass box idea. If you have to follow GPS coordinates out into the desert to look upon the glory of a single cat turd THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO WILL DO THAT! This is the genesis of poop mecca. Zeus, if you build it, they will come. Be the change.

He's a handsome big old kitty (big ass tom cats are my favs)! Speaking of which, our big ass tom is seriously behaviorally challenged at night. He actually gets locked into a room when we go to bed because 9 times out of 10 he will wake one of us up. His schtick is to just wander around the bed howling at the top of his lungs, and then running and hiding when you get up to deal with him. His howl kinda sounds like the alien death laser from Mass Effect, with an eow at the end of it.

DO IT!

They got rid of the keytar, otherwise I'd just be spamming it with Abba.

On the Media just released the first episode of their new show, an episode by episode podcast focusing on House of Cards, featuring Brook Gladstone and a rotating cast of journalists and politicians. I'm super excited about this, OTM is one of my favorite shows.

I've seen that before, but I had never checked out the guy's YouTube channel. It's oddly captivating. He just alternates between videos about balloons, and videos giving little updates on his life, like the play his church put on for Black History Month. Here's his balloon vest.

That seems like an extreme extension of the same kind of logic that some people use to condemn kink. Like, "You can't do X because it's demeaning to a woman." Yeah, but if that's exactly the kind of sex the woman wants to be having, then it's not really anyone else's place to be telling her that she shouldn't be having it. If I had to try and talk down a guy from that stance, I'd probably suggest he try out some roleplay. With the right toys, there's no reason he can't give his girlfriend a "blowjob" and see what it is like from the giver's perspective. That shouldn't be a necessary step, but it might be a useful one for some guys. If he freaked out about the idea of blowing his gf, then it would open up a bigger conversation about his views on sex and sexuality. Edited to add: My experience in kink communities is that the ratio of decent human being to asshole is better than your average singles bar, in large part because the assholes don't get invited to the good parties/groups. But it wouldn't surprise me if the solo practitioners skewed the opposite way, for the same reason (see Ghomeshi).

True! I know three guys I know who probably personally own 20+ watches each (one even has a travel case for them all so he can pick the appropriate watch for any clothing or function). I'm super disconnected from whatever is current or popular in fashion, so I didn't know if it's just some random outliers in my circle, or if this was a "thing" that was going on with men and watches.

Somewhat tangentially, is it my imagination, or has there been an increasing fetishization of watches? Like, a few people I know have increasingly larger and larger collections of watches that they obsess over. The attraction is a combination of "oh shiny!" with a dash of nerd wonder at interesting mechanical devices. It's no weirder than any other collectable, I suppose, but for some reason it irritates me.

That's disappointing that it is their modus operandi for customer service then. I usually strive to be as friendly and polite as possible when interacting with customer service reps, as I know they are just following the policies that they are told to follow. But I'm getting increasingly irate with them. 47 days after opening a warranty claim, and still no action, is just the most ridiculous warranty service I've ever experienced.

Nothing says you have to wait that long, live the dream now!

I think I might be done ever buying another Logitech product. I opened up an RMA on Jan. 22nd, and it still isn't resolved. After 6 weeks of molasses slow replies (it takes them an average of 7 days to reply), they finally told me that my original receipt (a copy of the email from Newegg) couldn't be verified and so the RMA was being denied. I've never, ever, had a poorer experience trying to get a warranty covered. I sent off a power supply to Seasonic a couple of weeks ago, and already have the replacement. I can deal with a product going bad, shit happens. But terrible customer service pisses me off like nothing else.

There is now a Shelter 2, only this time you are a mother Lynx with a bunch of kittens cubs.

So I duplicated your efforts on Firefox, and I get the same thing, a blocked script from alnera.eu. But only in private browsing mode. This is in Firefox 35.0.1, running AdBlock Plus and NoScript as security addons. Edited to add: I just checked 6 additional sites in private browsing mode, both ones I use on a regular basis and ones I don't, and the alnera thing didn't pop up in any of those. So if it is something local on my machine, it seems to be oddly local to idlethumbs? I can check more or try whatever to verify it more.

From Tim Schafer's twitter:

Oh man, I remember playing Dactyl Nightmare and Flying Aces in a mall arcade on a band trip to St. Louis back in...probably '92 or '93.

My freshman high school English teacher had a collection of Smurf figurines on her desk that she talked to. If she wasn't high, she probably should have been.

The hug part of the rant is just fucking weird. Like, physical touch with another human that is platonically intimate is...bad? Hugs are fucking badass, and anyone who expresses disdain or concern about the presence of hugs is weird. Edited to add: GG loves to bring up bizarre interpretations of toxic masculinity, but then be (naturally) completely blind to how it appears in the real world. A resistance to physical touch like a hug is something that I heavily associate with trying to maintain this facade of ridiculous traditional American masculinity.

It's like peanut butter and chocolate, some people like them by themselves, but claim they're even better together. On, "you guys" I still use some male plural references, but I do make a bigger effort to use neutral plurals as well, which I don't think is a bad thing to get into the habit of. I use crazy quite a bit still, and probably actually say insane more than I realize. But I'm not going to defend them as words I should be using, they're some lazy short hand that's left in my vocabulary. I guess I don't quite get the pushback on those words. Like, if you describe a politician or a gamergater as "insane" and what you mean is that they are "abhorrent" or "surprisingly ignorant" or "hateful", why not just use those words. I've seen people describe the Kansas legislature called insane or crazy on an almost daily basis for the last two months. But it's like a polite euphemism to keep from saying, "Our elected representatives are hateful people, engaged in abhorrent behavior stripping rights from people and are surprisingly ignorant of both history and literature." Use words like that. They aren't crazy, they aren't clinically diagnosed with any kind of illness or disorder. For those who want to use words like crazy, insane or retarded, do you think that there is ever a situation in which that is the MOST accurate word you could be using, or are many times you actually avoiding saying something that is more accurate? Because that's what I feel like I'm seeing out of my fellow Kansans right now, that it is safer to call someone crazy than it is to call them a hateful bigot. Edited to add: And I also don't want to paint myself as a saint. I'm sometimes a horrible fucking person who thinks horrible things, I was raised in a racist and sexist society. Some of that shit is so ingrained, it's hard not to think it, it's a kneejerk reaction. And sometimes I say awful shit, but usually only in the company of the lady, because we have an agreement to just let the other one say awful shit sometimes. But I strive to be more thoughtful about how I communicate, and I just don't think that's a bad goal to have, as an individual or as a culture.

Was it Ben?